Note to self: never tell Christy that she looked exactly like a Thanksgiving turkey.
cialis cheapest This scar tissue is not normal tissue at all but actually excess connective tissue. Sildenafil Citrate is the most prevalent and well known medicine for the treatment of erectile purchase viagra no prescription dysfunction of male reproductive organs. It is a rich source of vitamins, minerals and nutrients that help in preventing the erectile dysfunction Full Report sildenafil delivery from occurring. They think that this cialis canada generic is a cheap medicine and will not perform perfectly. It should surprise no one who knows Christy and me that, upon arriving at the hospital last night for induction, we discovered that the “very active baby” who’d been kicking her kidneys and making it impossible for her to finish her plate of cheese enchiladas (Christy’s choice of “last meal,” believe it or not) was in fact a series of contractions. As I observed at the time, it’s just like us to go into labor just in time for her induction. But since her cervix still wasn’t more than 60% effaced — and, even now, I feel almost guilty saying this, since it feels like the height of hubris for me to judge my wife’s cervix so harshly — we went ahead and applied some prostaglandin (in pill form, though I had expected an ointment of some sort) via what appeared to be a white plastic cigarette holder.
St. Mary’s is, as you might expect from the name, an old Catholic hospital to which a modern, ritzy hospital has been grafted. Perhaps it says something about my personality — namely, that I’m a geek (and so’s Christy, but she hides it better) — that the first thing I noticed about the birthing suite during the original tour was the presence of two labeled Cat-5 Ethernet jacks. I asked at the time whether those would be patched and open for DHCP connections, and obtained the answer — after the nurse, her eyes glazing over, relayed that exact question to the tech guy — that they would be. Imagine my horror, then, when we arrived and tried to connect our laptop, only to discover that the ports were completely dead. Inert. Even — and I can barely bring myself to say this — unpatched. When I expressed great dismay to the nurse, she conferred with the other nurses on duty and passed on that they could now get the Internet over the phones. I gave her a very blank look, I’m afraid, and then said, “Oh. You mean a dataport. Dial-up?” She glanced at the phone to find the port she meant, which was labeled “Dataport,” and nodded. And somewhere in the distance I heard the howl of wolves. I tried to explain to her that we didn’t have a dial-up number, that we in fact had entered this century on time and were using broadband at home and therefore hadn’t even brought a phone cord with us (even if we were to find a dial-up number somewhere else), and that I would deeply appreciate it if she could talk her network guy into just connecting the single cable that would turn the useless hole in their wall into a vibrant, exciting link to the outside world.
But all the hospital movies are still on VHS, and it quickly became obvious that I was, from her point of view, honking and bleh-ing like the unseen adults in Peanuts; I was clearly talking, and she’d be willing to play along, but this particular request was as unlikely to be honored as any request that involved, say, circus elephants or time travel.
We’d invited our dear friend Sara, who’s a pediatrician herself, to be present for the birth — and she showed up, suitcase in hand, just as Christy was settling into the routine. We chatted and tried to stay chipper ’til about ten o’clock, at which point we all turned in. Sara insisted, thanks to a certain martyr complex that she’s got to learn to deal with, that I take the couch; she folded into the recliner near the bed. Christy had been hot all day, so we set the thermostat down to sixty-six degrees — thoroughly chilling poor Sara, who had had the presence of mind to bring something like eighty layers of fluffy, woolen clothing for herself (and, even as she donned garment after garment, was selfless enough to keep insisting that the room was “just fine”); me, I just went into hibernation after making sure things were all okay.
And woke up abruptly at 3AM; the room was suddenly bustling with activity. Christy’s water had broken with an audible “pop,” and she was in the process of trying to make it to the bathroom without ruining the hardwood floor. Her contractions, which had previously been mild enough to sleep through, ramped up almost immediately — so we put on some music (via laptop; she’d copied some favorite MP3s over to the hard drive for precisely this eventuality; as I said, we’re geeks) and I settled down behind her as she squatted on the birthing ball (with the occasional squish, mind you; remember, her water had broken, and it turns out that gravity acts on liquids, too). We found that she couldn’t stand to be actually massaged, rendering all the massage oils and little pieces of equipment we’d brought instantly useless; instead, she required constant pressure across the entire span of her lower back — something that I was glad to provide, especially since this was easier than massage in the first place. Sara and I switched back and forth, making sure to keep Christy breathing in rhythm and basically engaging in a constant mantra of encouragement: “You’re doing great! Good job! Good breathing! Remember to blow, now…”
Her contractions kept coming, and by six in the morning they were barely a minute apart. She’d given up on the ball when it hurt her back, and moved out of the hot tub when the heat, which soothed her back, made her contractions worse. She was sore lying flat or on her side. So she’d spent the last hour kneeling on the bed, burying her face into pillows. By this point, all attempts at modesty had been completely discarded; she had long since ripped off her gown and hurled it away, leaving her with only the pink and powder blue straps of the two monitors (which she hadn’t wanted, naturally, but which were required for the induction). A lot of laboring moms walk, I hear; this was absolutely out of the question. She spent the next half hour in a pre-verbal state; we’d know a contraction was coming by the moan, quickly followed by rhythmic “poofs” as I or Sara the Nurse (a name which caused no small confusion), who was blessed with a certain stentorian authority and the uncanny ability to communicate with the hindbrain of women in labor, would try to get Christy to focus again. She was clearly coping with the pain by withdrawing, by shrinking into some untouchable part of herself, and had stopped communicating with the rest of us. I could tell she wanted ice chips only by putting them on her lips; if she didn’t spit them out or shake her head violently, she wanted them — and if she opened her mouth like a baby bird, she wanted more.
Another half hour of this, though, and our chorus of “you’re doing great” was wearing a bit thin; you could hear the question marks at the end of the sentence, no matter how hard we tried to keep them out of our voices. And wherever she had gone to escape the pain, it clearly wasn’t far enough away. So we were weren’t surprised when, at 7:30, she asked for something for the pain. We were surprised — or, at least, those of us who didn’t know my wife as well as we thought we did, like me — when she asked for just a bit of something to take the edge off, rather than an epidural or more serious narcotics. They started a drip of neomorphine about ten minutes later, ten minutes that apparently seemed to Christy like the longest ten minutes in the history of the universe, and she was fast asleep under a minute later. The morphine slowed down her contractions and mellowed them out a bit, making it possible for her to sleep between peaks. It was uncanny and even kind of scary, in a way; she’d come awake just enough to “poof” at the height of the contraction, and then flick off again like a lightswitch.
But they can only give you neomorphine for so long, especially when you’re getting close to delivery. If the baby’s born with morphine in its system, problems can arise — so the more you dilate and the faster you do it, the faster they have to get you drug-free. This meant that Christy could only be on the drip for an hour and a half, which prompted a number of absolutely heartbreaking protests like, “Oh, that hurts. That hurts again!” and “Where’s my drugs? I thought I was getting more drugs.” The knowledge that she was in pain, that we’d taken it away for a while, but that she would now have to go right back to worse pain than ever, was sobering and terrifying; I didn’t know how to tell her what was going on, and had no idea how to comfort her. So I did what everyone else in the room was doing: I lied a bit, and stretched the truth a bit more, and just kept her going.
Martha, our doctor, had made the right choice, though; Christy dilated to 10 centimeters just a couple of minutes after the neomorphine wore off, and began pushing — which was wonderfully exciting, if only because it felt like we could finally do something to bring the whole episode to a close. But Christy’s very small, and the baby was very big — unexpectedly, remarkably big, it would turn out — and so our first glimpse of head after some very fruitful and rapid stretching was a bit of a false alarm.
“Look!” we exclaimed. “There’s the head, honey! One more big push!” And so she’d push, and the head would inch forward just another bit — and would then slide right back up inside her. Clearly, suction was winning out over gravity, so after an hour we got Christy up on the squat bar to give gravity a bit of an edge. Even still, even after crowning, we didn’t make much progress; forty minutes after the top of the head was sticking out (having pushed aside some seriously lumpy and swollen vaginal tissue), we were still calling, “There’s the head, honey! One more big push!” In fairness, we weren’t lying; we just didn’t know that our baby would have such a remarkable — by which I mean “big-ass” — head.
By this point, I’d spent nearly an hour holding one of Christy’s legs in an attempt to get her to relax her thighs. It wasn’t helping much, since she just transferred that tension down to her ankles — which, at times, looked so distended and stressed that I was afraid she was going to break them. At Martha’s suggestion, we pushed her legs downward — more horizontal to the bed — to widen her pelvis, at which point enough of the head emerged that a first-year resident, Virginia, was able to reach down and actually wrap her fingertips around the very top of our baby’s skull; her grip was enough to resist suction, so the head didn’t go sliding back down between every push like it had before — and with that extra help, we started making some real progress. (In this way, we managed to avoid the vacuum extractor, something that had really concerned Christy during our pre-natal discussions; Virginia did a great job, and we’re indebted to her for it.)
With each push, more and more of my daughter’s head oozed — and I mean oozed — forward. I leaned down to Virginia as she lightly tugged, laughing, “On the downside, her head is the size of a watermelon. Luckily, though, it’s got the texture of a medicine ball.” (To which Martha promptly responded, “No squeezing the baby’s head for exercise, Tom.”) On my end — in other words, the end that could see what was going on, the end that wasn’t in indescribable agony — the hardest part was seeing head, and head, and head, and more head, inches of head, practically feet of head — but no face, and therefore no chin, and therefore no opportunity to look up at my screaming wife and finally say, “The head’s out, darling! Congratulations!”
Except, of course, that this finally did happen. She was bright blue, blue as fake raspberry flavoring, and the cord was wrapped around her neck — but expert fingers took care of that almost immediately. It might be worth noting that Christy pushes incredibly well; she’d usually manage three or four big pushes per contraction, and towards the end just started pushing continuously in her eagerness to get things over with. If Sophie’s face was blue as a blueberry, Christy’s was as purple as a plum; there were moments when I was afraid she’d wind up having an aneurism, as the veins stood out so far from her forehead that you could play the banjo with them. There was a further moment of tension when the baby’s shoulders, which I’m told normally slide out pretty easily, locked up in Christy’s narrow pelvis — at which point Sara and I, holding each leg, were joined by one nurse apiece; the four of us literally spread Christy wide and rotated her hips outward, like breaking a wishbone, as Martha hastily made a single surgical cut, and the baby popped, leapt — even exploded — free. I might note that some noble birth partner sustained a bruise to the bridge of his nose from a random flying heel at this time, but we won’t go into unnecessary detail.
Christy was in agony. She’d torn a lot — a level 3 tear, about as bad as it gets — and the baby had been considerably bigger than anyone but I had guessed. I’d been willing to go as high as nine pounds, three ounces; the runner-up, our doctor, had guessed seven pounds four. I had been an ounce too light. Had we known Sophie was so huge, we’d probably have opted for a C-section; certainly, one would have been recommended. Some topical painkillers were quickly applied to the tear and Martha set about assessing the damage as Virginia methodically pulled out the placenta, inch by bloody inch. (Note: a placenta looks exactly like you’d expect.)
Sophie got her color, a healthy pink, just moments after birth (11:49AM), and she was plopped — wet and bloody and covered in cottage cheese — onto Christy’s chest. Christy, still reeling, patted her chest in some confusion, and her eyes widened in astonishment. “Oh, a baby. MY baby. Hi, baby.” I nearly cried. But I’ll freely admit that enough of my old self remained to immediately start dabbing at Christy’s bloodier spots with a wet towel, and I washed off her hand before I took it when she offered it to me. Old habits, I’m afraid, die hard. But, to be honest, I didn’t think I’d have a problem with the mess — although lots of other people who know me, and know my aversion to slime, crud, and the other two horsemen of the apocalypse, were convinced that I’d pass out in the first hour — and had even been looking forward to cutting the cord. (Note: so many people had warned me that the umbilical cord was fibrous and hard to cut, like a pack of rubber bands, that I expected it to be almost impossible to sever; in reality, it took just two firm snips and less than a second.)
It dawned on us around noon that we had been calling her Sophie for some time. So Sophia Rose she is, now and forevermore, until she becomes a teenager and starts calling herself Dulcinea Sorrowchild.
While sewing Christy back up, a process that took about another half an hour and wasn’t exactly painless (note to self: never tell Christy that she looked exactly — exactly — like a Thanksgiving turkey), Martha poked herself with one of her needles. For her peace of mind, Christy’s going to be getting tested for HIV and hepatitis (by which I mean Martha wants to make sure that she didn’t give herself some disease that Christy might have, not the other way around.) I’m actually a little intrigued by the results, myself, because I did at one point contract herpes but haven’t had an outbreak in over a decade. Christy’s never had one, herself, and the virus didn’t appear on the blood screen when she got pregnant, so I figure everything will come back okay — but it’s still odd to think that what used to be a raging case of my incurable disease has petered out so much that my wife has been able to (thankfully) avoid it. I pointed out that this blood-sharing technically makes Martha and my wife blood sisters, although the bond currently goes only one way; to be fair, Christy would have to take some of her blood. Inexplicably, neither woman seemed inclined to act on this recommendation, meaning that they’re going to have to learn to live with the power imbalance.
After having seen Christy this morning, I think it’s very likely that Martha may wind up developing superpowers. I hope she uses them for good.
I am a father.
cialis cheapest This scar tissue is not normal tissue at all but actually excess connective tissue. Sildenafil Citrate is the most prevalent and well known medicine for the treatment of erectile purchase viagra no prescription dysfunction of male reproductive organs. It is a rich source of vitamins, minerals and nutrients that help in preventing the erectile dysfunction Full Report sildenafil delivery from occurring. They think that this cialis canada generic is a cheap medicine and will not perform perfectly. It should surprise no one who knows Christy and me that, upon arriving at the hospital last night for induction, we discovered that the “very active baby” who’d been kicking her kidneys and making it impossible for her to finish her plate of cheese enchiladas (Christy’s choice of “last meal,” believe it or not) was in fact a series of contractions. As I observed at the time, it’s just like us to go into labor just in time for her induction. But since her cervix still wasn’t more than 60% effaced — and, even now, I feel almost guilty saying this, since it feels like the height of hubris for me to judge my wife’s cervix so harshly — we went ahead and applied some prostaglandin (in pill form, though I had expected an ointment of some sort) via what appeared to be a white plastic cigarette holder.
St. Mary’s is, as you might expect from the name, an old Catholic hospital to which a modern, ritzy hospital has been grafted. Perhaps it says something about my personality — namely, that I’m a geek (and so’s Christy, but she hides it better) — that the first thing I noticed about the birthing suite during the original tour was the presence of two labeled Cat-5 Ethernet jacks. I asked at the time whether those would be patched and open for DHCP connections, and obtained the answer — after the nurse, her eyes glazing over, relayed that exact question to the tech guy — that they would be. Imagine my horror, then, when we arrived and tried to connect our laptop, only to discover that the ports were completely dead. Inert. Even — and I can barely bring myself to say this — unpatched. When I expressed great dismay to the nurse, she conferred with the other nurses on duty and passed on that they could now get the Internet over the phones. I gave her a very blank look, I’m afraid, and then said, “Oh. You mean a dataport. Dial-up?” She glanced at the phone to find the port she meant, which was labeled “Dataport,” and nodded. And somewhere in the distance I heard the howl of wolves. I tried to explain to her that we didn’t have a dial-up number, that we in fact had entered this century on time and were using broadband at home and therefore hadn’t even brought a phone cord with us (even if we were to find a dial-up number somewhere else), and that I would deeply appreciate it if she could talk her network guy into just connecting the single cable that would turn the useless hole in their wall into a vibrant, exciting link to the outside world.
But all the hospital movies are still on VHS, and it quickly became obvious that I was, from her point of view, honking and bleh-ing like the unseen adults in Peanuts; I was clearly talking, and she’d be willing to play along, but this particular request was as unlikely to be honored as any request that involved, say, circus elephants or time travel.
We’d invited our dear friend Sara, who’s a pediatrician herself, to be present for the birth — and she showed up, suitcase in hand, just as Christy was settling into the routine. We chatted and tried to stay chipper ’til about ten o’clock, at which point we all turned in. Sara insisted, thanks to a certain martyr complex that she’s got to learn to deal with, that I take the couch; she folded into the recliner near the bed. Christy had been hot all day, so we set the thermostat down to sixty-six degrees — thoroughly chilling poor Sara, who had had the presence of mind to bring something like eighty layers of fluffy, woolen clothing for herself (and, even as she donned garment after garment, was selfless enough to keep insisting that the room was “just fine”); me, I just went into hibernation after making sure things were all okay.
And woke up abruptly at 3AM; the room was suddenly bustling with activity. Christy’s water had broken with an audible “pop,” and she was in the process of trying to make it to the bathroom without ruining the hardwood floor. Her contractions, which had previously been mild enough to sleep through, ramped up almost immediately — so we put on some music (via laptop; she’d copied some favorite MP3s over to the hard drive for precisely this eventuality; as I said, we’re geeks) and I settled down behind her as she squatted on the birthing ball (with the occasional squish, mind you; remember, her water had broken, and it turns out that gravity acts on liquids, too). We found that she couldn’t stand to be actually massaged, rendering all the massage oils and little pieces of equipment we’d brought instantly useless; instead, she required constant pressure across the entire span of her lower back — something that I was glad to provide, especially since this was easier than massage in the first place. Sara and I switched back and forth, making sure to keep Christy breathing in rhythm and basically engaging in a constant mantra of encouragement: “You’re doing great! Good job! Good breathing! Remember to blow, now…”
Her contractions kept coming, and by six in the morning they were barely a minute apart. She’d given up on the ball when it hurt her back, and moved out of the hot tub when the heat, which soothed her back, made her contractions worse. She was sore lying flat or on her side. So she’d spent the last hour kneeling on the bed, burying her face into pillows. By this point, all attempts at modesty had been completely discarded; she had long since ripped off her gown and hurled it away, leaving her with only the pink and powder blue straps of the two monitors (which she hadn’t wanted, naturally, but which were required for the induction). A lot of laboring moms walk, I hear; this was absolutely out of the question. She spent the next half hour in a pre-verbal state; we’d know a contraction was coming by the moan, quickly followed by rhythmic “poofs” as I or Sara the Nurse (a name which caused no small confusion), who was blessed with a certain stentorian authority and the uncanny ability to communicate with the hindbrain of women in labor, would try to get Christy to focus again. She was clearly coping with the pain by withdrawing, by shrinking into some untouchable part of herself, and had stopped communicating with the rest of us. I could tell she wanted ice chips only by putting them on her lips; if she didn’t spit them out or shake her head violently, she wanted them — and if she opened her mouth like a baby bird, she wanted more.
Another half hour of this, though, and our chorus of “you’re doing great” was wearing a bit thin; you could hear the question marks at the end of the sentence, no matter how hard we tried to keep them out of our voices. And wherever she had gone to escape the pain, it clearly wasn’t far enough away. So we were weren’t surprised when, at 7:30, she asked for something for the pain. We were surprised — or, at least, those of us who didn’t know my wife as well as we thought we did, like me — when she asked for just a bit of something to take the edge off, rather than an epidural or more serious narcotics. They started a drip of neomorphine about ten minutes later, ten minutes that apparently seemed to Christy like the longest ten minutes in the history of the universe, and she was fast asleep under a minute later. The morphine slowed down her contractions and mellowed them out a bit, making it possible for her to sleep between peaks. It was uncanny and even kind of scary, in a way; she’d come awake just enough to “poof” at the height of the contraction, and then flick off again like a lightswitch.
But they can only give you neomorphine for so long, especially when you’re getting close to delivery. If the baby’s born with morphine in its system, problems can arise — so the more you dilate and the faster you do it, the faster they have to get you drug-free. This meant that Christy could only be on the drip for an hour and a half, which prompted a number of absolutely heartbreaking protests like, “Oh, that hurts. That hurts again!” and “Where’s my drugs? I thought I was getting more drugs.” The knowledge that she was in pain, that we’d taken it away for a while, but that she would now have to go right back to worse pain than ever, was sobering and terrifying; I didn’t know how to tell her what was going on, and had no idea how to comfort her. So I did what everyone else in the room was doing: I lied a bit, and stretched the truth a bit more, and just kept her going.
Martha, our doctor, had made the right choice, though; Christy dilated to 10 centimeters just a couple of minutes after the neomorphine wore off, and began pushing — which was wonderfully exciting, if only because it felt like we could finally do something to bring the whole episode to a close. But Christy’s very small, and the baby was very big — unexpectedly, remarkably big, it would turn out — and so our first glimpse of head after some very fruitful and rapid stretching was a bit of a false alarm.
“Look!” we exclaimed. “There’s the head, honey! One more big push!” And so she’d push, and the head would inch forward just another bit — and would then slide right back up inside her. Clearly, suction was winning out over gravity, so after an hour we got Christy up on the squat bar to give gravity a bit of an edge. Even still, even after crowning, we didn’t make much progress; forty minutes after the top of the head was sticking out (having pushed aside some seriously lumpy and swollen vaginal tissue), we were still calling, “There’s the head, honey! One more big push!” In fairness, we weren’t lying; we just didn’t know that our baby would have such a remarkable — by which I mean “big-ass” — head.
By this point, I’d spent nearly an hour holding one of Christy’s legs in an attempt to get her to relax her thighs. It wasn’t helping much, since she just transferred that tension down to her ankles — which, at times, looked so distended and stressed that I was afraid she was going to break them. At Martha’s suggestion, we pushed her legs downward — more horizontal to the bed — to widen her pelvis, at which point enough of the head emerged that a first-year resident, Virginia, was able to reach down and actually wrap her fingertips around the very top of our baby’s skull; her grip was enough to resist suction, so the head didn’t go sliding back down between every push like it had before — and with that extra help, we started making some real progress. (In this way, we managed to avoid the vacuum extractor, something that had really concerned Christy during our pre-natal discussions; Virginia did a great job, and we’re indebted to her for it.)
With each push, more and more of my daughter’s head oozed — and I mean oozed — forward. I leaned down to Virginia as she lightly tugged, laughing, “On the downside, her head is the size of a watermelon. Luckily, though, it’s got the texture of a medicine ball.” (To which Martha promptly responded, “No squeezing the baby’s head for exercise, Tom.”) On my end — in other words, the end that could see what was going on, the end that wasn’t in indescribable agony — the hardest part was seeing head, and head, and head, and more head, inches of head, practically feet of head — but no face, and therefore no chin, and therefore no opportunity to look up at my screaming wife and finally say, “The head’s out, darling! Congratulations!”
Except, of course, that this finally did happen. She was bright blue, blue as fake raspberry flavoring, and the cord was wrapped around her neck — but expert fingers took care of that almost immediately. It might be worth noting that Christy pushes incredibly well; she’d usually manage three or four big pushes per contraction, and towards the end just started pushing continuously in her eagerness to get things over with. If Sophie’s face was blue as a blueberry, Christy’s was as purple as a plum; there were moments when I was afraid she’d wind up having an aneurism, as the veins stood out so far from her forehead that you could play the banjo with them. There was a further moment of tension when the baby’s shoulders, which I’m told normally slide out pretty easily, locked up in Christy’s narrow pelvis — at which point Sara and I, holding each leg, were joined by one nurse apiece; the four of us literally spread Christy wide and rotated her hips outward, like breaking a wishbone, as Martha hastily made a single surgical cut, and the baby popped, leapt — even exploded — free. I might note that some noble birth partner sustained a bruise to the bridge of his nose from a random flying heel at this time, but we won’t go into unnecessary detail.
Christy was in agony. She’d torn a lot — a level 3 tear, about as bad as it gets — and the baby had been considerably bigger than anyone but I had guessed. I’d been willing to go as high as nine pounds, three ounces; the runner-up, our doctor, had guessed seven pounds four. I had been an ounce too light. Had we known Sophie was so huge, we’d probably have opted for a C-section; certainly, one would have been recommended. Some topical painkillers were quickly applied to the tear and Martha set about assessing the damage as Virginia methodically pulled out the placenta, inch by bloody inch. (Note: a placenta looks exactly like you’d expect.)
Sophie got her color, a healthy pink, just moments after birth (11:49AM), and she was plopped — wet and bloody and covered in cottage cheese — onto Christy’s chest. Christy, still reeling, patted her chest in some confusion, and her eyes widened in astonishment. “Oh, a baby. MY baby. Hi, baby.” I nearly cried. But I’ll freely admit that enough of my old self remained to immediately start dabbing at Christy’s bloodier spots with a wet towel, and I washed off her hand before I took it when she offered it to me. Old habits, I’m afraid, die hard. But, to be honest, I didn’t think I’d have a problem with the mess — although lots of other people who know me, and know my aversion to slime, crud, and the other two horsemen of the apocalypse, were convinced that I’d pass out in the first hour — and had even been looking forward to cutting the cord. (Note: so many people had warned me that the umbilical cord was fibrous and hard to cut, like a pack of rubber bands, that I expected it to be almost impossible to sever; in reality, it took just two firm snips and less than a second.)
It dawned on us around noon that we had been calling her Sophie for some time. So Sophia Rose she is, now and forevermore, until she becomes a teenager and starts calling herself Dulcinea Sorrowchild.
While sewing Christy back up, a process that took about another half an hour and wasn’t exactly painless (note to self: never tell Christy that she looked exactly — exactly — like a Thanksgiving turkey), Martha poked herself with one of her needles. For her peace of mind, Christy’s going to be getting tested for HIV and hepatitis (by which I mean Martha wants to make sure that she didn’t give herself some disease that Christy might have, not the other way around.) I’m actually a little intrigued by the results, myself, because I did at one point contract herpes but haven’t had an outbreak in over a decade. Christy’s never had one, herself, and the virus didn’t appear on the blood screen when she got pregnant, so I figure everything will come back okay — but it’s still odd to think that what used to be a raging case of my incurable disease has petered out so much that my wife has been able to (thankfully) avoid it. I pointed out that this blood-sharing technically makes Martha and my wife blood sisters, although the bond currently goes only one way; to be fair, Christy would have to take some of her blood. Inexplicably, neither woman seemed inclined to act on this recommendation, meaning that they’re going to have to learn to live with the power imbalance.
After having seen Christy this morning, I think it’s very likely that Martha may wind up developing superpowers. I hope she uses them for good.
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